


Waste

by felldownthelist



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Pre-Season/Series 01, Reginald Hargreeves Not Actually Doing Any Parenting, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Short, The Nannies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 12:09:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20425742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felldownthelist/pseuds/felldownthelist
Summary: “Five” is a strange baby. The other nannies have their own issues, but Ceri keeps… well. Misplacing him, isn’t the best way to put it. Makes her sound like she can’t do her job. But.





	Waste

Nanny Ceridwyn was in charge of baby number five. She hadn’t quite realized, upon taking the job in New York, fresh out of training in England and desperately looking for somewhere else to be, that “baby number five” meant that the boy was literally named “Five” insofar as her employer was concerned.

Jesus fucking Christ.

At the time she thought money meant higher standards.

She quite quickly realizes that she was wrong.

“Five” is a strange baby. The other nannies have their own issues, but Ceri keeps… well. Misplacing him, isn’t the best way to put it. Makes her sound like she can’t do her job. But.

One minute he’s in the crib. The next, he’s lying on the floor six feet from the crib, where anybody could step on him.

Nanny Alicia, prancing around and singing at her five month old (“Three”, good God he can’t expect the children to grow up with these names… can he?!) almost does step on him, spends half an hour berating her. It’s paranoia, Ceri sees. She’s terrified she’ll get sacked.

They none of them are overly experienced. They’re all very similar looking, actually, Ceri thinks. In their twenties. Slight and blonde.

She doesn’t want to think overmuch on what that means.

When he’s almost a year old, Five utters his first word.

“Ta.”

“Ta?” Ceri says, back to him, curious but happy. Reginald Hargreeves had been expressing concern over his ‘late development’ and Ceri had been drudging up old coursework and the like to politely counter that babies develop at different rates, and speech at eleven months old isn’t unusual or a cause for alarm.

“Tam. Ta. Ta. Tam.”

“Tam?” She repeats, a little charmed. He’s rather serious, as babies go. Whereas Margery and Allison and Alicia seem to have their hands full, she feels like Five is probably a nice easy boy in comparison. He just needs routine, and stimulation when he’s awake. He enjoys the games where you have to pick the shape to fit the correct hole in the wooden block, and that’s rather advanced for his age. His speech hasn’t worried her.

She brings it up at his weekly check in. Reginald Hargreeves wants their measurements and behaviors documented to death as they develop, and she feels partly pleased by the attentiveness and partly like this may be another red flag, given that the children are still referred to by number and – additionally – their adoptive caregiver has frighteningly little other interest in their day to day lives. Seven children, under his roof, that he doesn’t care to know anything about but their numbers at the end of the week. What they’ve ‘achieved’.

They’re eleven months old.

Reginald makes a noise at her announcement, seems unimpressed at the actual vocalization itself. Baby Five sits, almost sullen, she thinks she imagines, or projects, or something.

“I have an exciting announcement for you, Nanny,” he tells her at the end of the appointment slot. “My research into advanced primates has yielded an extraordinary success. His name is Pogo, and he will be living and studying with us by the end of the calendar month.”

“Lovely news, Sir,” she says, having no idea what the consequences of what he’s said will mean, not really knowing what else to say. This isn’t really a new experience in his presence.

“Hmm,” he sort of says, dismissive, and she recognizes the familiar sign that it’s time to take baby Five away back to the nursery, where he isn’t bothering the man.

“My sweet-pea,” and “my flower,” and “darling boy,” are all ways she starts to speak to him that don’t involve calling him ‘Five’. She has an awful feeling about it, somehow. Ignores all the time she spent researching development of children’s identities when she was training; this is not the place to recall that material. She knows that several of the other nannies do something similar.

They don’t speak. They’re young; most of them immigrants. Ceri can’t lose her job. Doesn’t relish the thought of losing her little sweet-pea besides.

She’s looked after the boy every day since he was brought to America. He’s five years old, now. (Five. She doesn’t think about it.)

“Sweet-pea, would you like your oatmeal?” Ceri asks, as he sits alone at the table like all the children do, per Reginald’s instructions. She sets the bowl down in front of him.

“Why do you ask if I want oatmeal when I get given it anyway?” he asks her, and she’s sort of proud at how he’s been asking these questions lately, sort of perturbed at the answers she has to give.

“Clever boy. Your father wants you to eat it. I’m asking because I was raised by polite folk, and ladies never demand, they suggest.”

“It’s stupid.”

“You do what I say every time,” Ceri points out, fondly.

“Ladies are no different to Gentlemen. We saw those slides.”

It was far too young to begin with sex education, Ceri thinks privately. But her boy took it very sensibly, and at the same time, they were learning about where to strike a target; the difference between women and men in that respect. And Three had had a number of questions, even at this age, as to whether she was equal to her brothers, because all the nannies were women, the gardeners and cooks men. Alicia had looked quietly pleased all day after that, and Ceri figures she’s just doing a good job with the equality schtick.

“You are a very different boy to most though,” she tells her pumpkin, now. “I would never presume to tell you what to do. And I would always assume that your manners meant you would never make a little ‘jump’ away from me,” she teases, “when I ask you to do things that are important. Like eat your breakfast.”

“I don’t ‘jump’ away from you,” her little flower says, with a frown. “I have manners. And you’re my Nanny.”

“Then we have an understanding.” Ceri winks at him.

He’s seven years old the first time he brings up anything that makes her worry to this extent about his siblings. She doesn’t speak much to the other nannies. They’ve grown colder, over the years, even to each other. The routines are strict, their sleep is monitored, even. They have evolved to a point where they exist to fulfill the schedule that Reginald Hargreeves has devised, and it is a harsh schedule. Ceri hates it. Ceri can’t leave. She has no energy to even think about leaving. And her boy, besides.

“Are you my Mother?” Her little pudding asks, strangely unemotional about the question, like he’s just looking for a fact.

“No,” she tells him. “Sweet-pea, I’m your Nanny.”

“Could you be Six’s Nanny, too?” He asks. “I’m quiet and I know I make less mess than Two or Four, and I don’t need as much attention as Three and Seven.”

“Why are you asking me this, darling?” Ceri says, thinking of Beth, looking after Six, who has never seemed remiss in her duties.

“He cries when he’s asleep,” her boy says, blunt like he does. “I saw it.”

“Oh,” Ceri says, her heart clenching. “Oh.” She restrains herself, somehow, from asking when the hell he was out of bed to see that, because the notion has her cold. Reginald Hargreeves did not tolerate children out of bed during sleeping hours. She hasn’t heard a word about it, but her little one doesn’t lie.

“I don’t cry, ever,” her boy carries on, heedless of her inner turmoil. “So you must be a better Nanny.”

“No, sweetheart,” she thinks about how to explain this. “You can jump through space,” she says.

“I know,” he tells her, like she’s being slow. He’s seven. Jesus.

“Your brother Six has a different special ability.”

“He also has different hair. Why are you saying that makes him extra sad?”

“No darling. I’m saying that.” Shit. She hasn’t had to think about this kind of thing in years. She barely remembers her training, having just adjusted to survive in this awful mansion. “Some differences are worse than others.” She doesn’t know what to say. She’s failing him, for the first time she can remember outside of failing to realize he could fucking teleport as a baby, letting him run off any and everywhere when she wasn’t keeping a hawk eye on him.

“Some differences are worse than others,” he parrots, and it’s not a complimentary tone. He’s _seven_.

“I’ll speak to – Nanny Beth,” she says, and suddenly doesn’t know if her boy knows who that is. “Six’s Nanny,” she clarifies. “I won’t say anything about you seeing him cry,” she adds on, urgently, seeing a sudden drop on his face. “Not a word. I’ll just ask her if he’s okay. If she needs any help.”

“Please don’t get in trouble,” her flower says, suddenly, and it’s all Ceri can do to stay outwardly calm. It’s for his benefit, after all. “My darling,” she says. “Never worry over me.”

“I do,” he confesses, to her absolute distress. “Please don’t get in trouble with Dad.”

Seven years ago, she should have picked him up and left. She should have run away, as fast as she could. Reginald Hargreeves would have been pre-occupied with the other six babies. She should have just taken him away, brought him up somewhere else, somewhere-

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Ceri is strung out and exhausted, like all of her colleagues, the day that the gardeners get fired en masse.

The children are brought into a room with their ‘Father’ and on leaving, have no questions and nothing to say about it, barring Alicia who takes Three to bed looking like she feels, and Oba, who brings a very uncharacteristically unhappy looking One back to his room apart from everybody else.

Her boy doesn’t say anything to her about any of it, but he’s getting older and she doesn’t expect him to share everything forever.

“I wish you were my Mother,” is what she hears getting her flower out of bed, one morning; he’s thirteen, he’s been precocious lately in a way that has her worried for him. He’s starting to voice opinions he might not want to. Their first ‘mission’ is in less than six months. All the Nannies know about that. They’ve all aged around ten years, Ceri thinks, with that knowledge. Reginald Hargreeves outlined his plan for a staged bank robbery. Of course, the only ones who would know it was staged would be him and the house staff; even the robbers were currently plotting for what they thought was a genuine job.

She doesn’t know what to say. She’s exhausted. She loves him so much. Ceri hears herself reply, “I would be your Mother in a heartbeat if I could,” and then, “I love you very much, which I hope that you know. I’m so very proud of you.”

“But we could live in a house, just us,” he’s saying, making his bed like he’s supposed to. No fuss. No back talk. She has it so, so easy. “And I can be the man of the house,” and, oh God, her heart, she can’t take this right now, “and I’ll go to work and look after you. You won’t have to be here any more.” He’s done with his bed.

He’s almost as tall as her now, her boy. He cares about his siblings, and humans, and fucking porpoises – she had to console him after a television special in their thirty minute Sunday slot; plastics are ruining the planet, he had raged, while she’d rued that she hadn’t watched it to check what he’d seen, she wasn’t completely sure how to console him and besides that he wasn’t getting any more television until the following Sunday.

Pogo has a TV in his lab, she thinks, but that’s completely off limits to her.

Pogo is an extension of Reginald Hargreeves; created in the same vein. She can’t deal with him.

Her boy. “You are,” she tells him, “by far the most wonderful child I have ever met.” She moves into his space, something she tries not to do too often. She puts a hand on his face. “My wonderful boy,” she says, and it feels so important that she tell him, somehow. “You can do anything,” she says. “You can do anything you want. And even if it seems impossible, I believe that you can change the world.” She thinks of what she’s seen of his powers. He’s thirteen years old.

“You’re the best Nanny I could ever have had,” he tells her, earnest.

At breakfast that morning, Seven kills her fifth replacement Nanny. Ceri is glad she never made friends here, until Reginald makes an announcement. They’re all terminated. And six women stand before him, run into the ground, unable to fight, unable to even communicate between each other because of the barriers this house has made.

And it’s Alicia who goes first, shrieking, for him, and Ceri feels like she’s in shock as Pogo fires something silent that makes her collapse to the ground, seizing, mouth foaming, and none of the rest of them move forward.

“I see,” Reginald Hargreeves says, and she hears it as if underwater. “Pogo. Terminate the rest.”

Her boy. Her boy. Her-

She’s dead. She can’t leave. She’s dead.

She’s not like Beth, who went mad at what happened to Six – Ben, the robot replacement for them named him. Ben.

She’s just.

She watches him run out of the academy, at fifteen years old. He doesn’t remember her. Alicia died and Three – now _Allison_ – has nobody to teach her what not to do. Has nobody to care for her when her adoptive father instructs her to make her siblings forget about the women that loved them and cared for them the first thirteen years of their lives.

Her boy is gone. He’s gone, and she watches the others work so hard in his absence and then, finally, it’s like a relief, like she can finally relax, like she can finally but almost let go, they all go, one after the other.

Those poor children.

One – Luther – is all that’s left.

His ‘Father’ butchers him after sending him out to get hurt on his own, and Oba goes mad in her periphery. It’s taken them all at one point or another. Oba has never loved seeing her sweet boy under this monster’s influence, and, now she’s dead, it’s taken on an intense hatred; she’s so focused.

Luther wakes up, distressed and alone, and the closest woman to a mother he had ever had – that he doesn’t even fucking remember – alternates between cursing Pogo and Reginald and muttering reassurances he would never hear.

Klaus. That sweet, lovely little boy. Ceri doesn’t want to bother him.

Oba and Alicia have no such compunctions. They scream at him in the hallways.

Margery, his own Nanny, is nowhere to be found. Ceri is glad, after she sees the state he’s in. She doesn’t want to think about how she’d feel watching her own boy turn to such destructive ends, just to destroy his own pain.

Speaking of her boy.

He’s back. He’s back, and he’s talking about being much older than he looks and she can believe it – he was always destined for this kind of situational madness. She’s so, so, so glad his ‘Father’ wasn’t involved in it. He looks good. He’s drinking excessively, sure. But he’s not doing anything near as destructive as what Klaus is. He’s cocksure, and he’s himself.

He kept the name ‘Five’, and she somehow loves that even though she used to hate it. Her special boy, always making his own choices.

She watches him until he leaves, and then he somehow turns back time and they’re living the same week again, and she knows she only knows because she’s dead, but holy shit.

“Klaus, sweetheart,” she tries, one day. He’s already looking stressed at a cook, face melted. She hopes she will be less annoying.

“I know you don’t remember us,” she carries on. “But we all loved you. I know they just scream now. No matter how warped our minds became. I hope that this isn’t distressing. You were loved,” she tells him, quietly, watches him look around the room. And then, shock of all shocks, he looks directly at her.

“Not shouting your head off about oatmeal? Or, I don’t know, children out of bed?” He says, and her heart breaks, she was wrong, she loved the ones that weren’t even hers.

“Never,” she tells him, soft.

Klaus just frowns. “What do you want?” he says.

“Nothing,” she tells him. “Nothing at all.”

“Why are you here, then?” He asks.

“I watch out for my boy,” she says, honestly. “Your Nanny would watch out for you too, if she could.”

“Whaaaaaaat,” Klaus breathes, and Ceri marvels at who he’s become. Not a child, that’s for sure.

“My boy that monster called ‘Five’,” she says, because she knows him now. “Your Nanny was Nanny Margery. She loved you very much.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Klaus says, looking one step from ignoring her. She won’t bother him if he does.

“Reginald was a piece of work,” she says. “Made you all forget about us. Us who raised you. Loved you.”

“Go away,” Klaus says, suddenly, and she does, because he’s always been a sensitive boy, she remembers, and it’s not fair that he has to hear the dead.

She follows Five, mostly. Likes his company. Likes to see how clever he is, likes to keep him close.

Sometimes he shivers when she sits near him.

Sometimes he doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> Love a guy that names his animal experiment but not his kids. Super dude. Top banana. I was sort of going to tag this on to Levitate but what's the point.


End file.
